Sophrology Academy Module 2.3 Emotional Imbalance PDF

Module 2.3 Emotional Imbalance and Consequences Emotion is a double-edged sword that is meant to help but can also hurt. If you’re a person who doesn’t know how to manage your emotions or have lived with such a person, feelings can seem frightening and overwhelming. Fear and helplessness may cause...

Module 2.3 Emotional Imbalance and Consequences Emotion is a double-edged sword that is meant to help but can also hurt. If you’re a person who doesn’t know how to manage your emotions or have lived with such a person, feelings can seem frightening and overwhelming. Fear and helplessness may cause you to freeze, act out, or shut down—inhibiting your ability to think rationally and causing you to say and do things you later regret. The same stimulus or event can either build us or destroy us depending on our relation with it - a painful emotion can be an opportunity to learn and grow or, conversely, take controle of us. In general, we can find ourselves in the grip of an emotion in two ways: firstly, when we try to turn away from it either through denial or flight, and secondly when we dwell on it, through reflection, rumination, victimisation, self-blame and other attitudes, that result from our thoughts. When we try to push the emotion away by avoiding it, we believe that it will disappear. However, the emotion is anchored within us and can manifest itself in an unpredictable and unhealthy way, outside our consciousness, through somatisation, anxiety, or deterioration of our personal relationships as a consequence of a lack of authenticity towards ourselves. The more we distance ourselves from the emotion, the more we deny it, the more we think about it, the more we intensify it. Emotional Imbalance When it comes to dealing with difficult emotions, there are two ways in which most people respond: Acting out Suppress If you act out with a strong emotion like anger, you will most likely create undesirable consequences in your relationships, your work, and even your play. The ripple effects of acting out usually provoke more anger around you, which leads to more difficulty. The consequences of suppressing those big emotions can be even more dangerous. Emotion suppression consists of “inhibiting the outward signs of your inner feelings.” Unfortunately, suppression doesn’t make the emotion go away, it just stays inside causing more pain. Denying the emotion, eliminating emotional clues, blocks it from delivering its message, preventing it from influencing our thought and our behaviour. This can lead to indifference and accumulation of frustrations and residual tension from previous repressed frustrations, increasing the likelihood of an emotional outburst. Emotional suppression happens when uncomfortable thoughts and feelings are pushed out of the mind. “Sucking it up” might decrease the outward expressions of our emotions but not the inner emotional experience. Common ways of controlling or avoiding uncomfortable emotions People do this in a variety of ways, from using distraction, or numbing (through drugs and alcohol), to overeating or controlling food intake. Many addictive and inappropriate behaviours are rooted in the inability to take emotionally stressful situations in stride. Distracting ourselves with obsessive thoughts, escapist fantasies, mindless entertainment, and addictive behaviours to avoid emotions we fear or dislike. Watching television for hours, playing computer games, and surfing the internet are common ways we avoid dealing with our feelings. Sticking with one emotional response that we feel comfortable with, no matter what the situation requires. For example, constantly joking around to cover up insecurities or getting angry all the time to avoid feeling frightened and sad. Shutting down or shutting out intense emotions. If we feel overwhelmed by our emotions, we may cope by numbing ourselves. We may feel completely disconnected from our emotions, like we no longer have feelings at all. Why Avoiding Unpleasant Emotions isn’t the Answer We are all born with the capacity to freely experience the full range of human emotions—including joy, anger, sadness, and fear. Yet many people are disconnected from some or all of their feelings. People who were traumatised in early life often disconnect from their emotions and the physical feelings they evoke. But when you try to avoid pain and discomfort, your emotions become distorted, displaced, and stifled. You lose touch with your emotions when you attempt to control or avoid them, rather than experience them. The consequences of avoiding your emotions: You don’t know yourself. This is one of the most important consequences. It includes understanding why you react to different situations, how much or how little things mean to you, and the difference between what you think you want and what you really need. You lose the good, along with the bad. When you shut down negative feelings like anger, fear, or sadness, you also shut down your ability to experience positive feelings such as joy, love, and happiness. It’s exhausting. You can distort and numb emotions, but you can’t eliminate them entirely. It takes a lot of energy to avoid having an authentic emotional experience and keep your feelings suppressed. The effort leaves you stressed and drained. It damages your relationships. The more you distance yourself from your feelings, the more distant you become from others, as well as yourself. You lose the ability to build strong relationships and communicate effectively, both of which depend on being in touch with your emotions. By avoiding emotions we dislike, find frightening and overwhelming, we also distance ourselves from delightful emotions. But they are the ones that sustain us in difficult and challenging times. We can overcome loss and great challenges, only if we retain our ability to experience joy. These joyous, uplifting emotions remind us, in the worst of times, that life is worthwhile and can be wonderful as well as terrible. The importance of emotional balance We need to understand emotion as both a radar and a motor for action. Emotions make us aware that we are perceptive beings sensitive to our surroundings, which is essential for positive evolution and maintaining human relationships. Perception still has the biggest impact on disturbing the balance in our emotional life. The Perception Process As you know, in Sophrology, we distinguish Objective Reality from Reality LIVED, meaning, what this reality feels like for us, how we experience things, and the way we perceive the world around us. One of the goals is to become more objective with regard to ourselves, others, and our environment without having any judgment (fewer filters, less bias) but simply consider things for what they are. This facilitates managing our reactiveness, letting go of lingering emotions through negative thoughts, and overall gives us more inner peace. "Changing your Perception broadens your Horizon" - Carin van Buuren One of the ways to achieve a more objective outlook is by changing our perception. Forming a perception begins with: 1. the sensory experience of the world around us through our five senses. We see, hear, smell, taste, or feel stimuli that impact our senses. 2. This information is sent to our brain where it is organized by connecting it with similar information already stored. 3. It is then interpreted and consciously experienced to make it meaningful. (see 2.2 FEELINGS) As we have seen in the Four Quadrant Model, we are constantly evaluating. We want to understand what is happening, assess the situation (for real or perceived threats), and we need to make sense of it. The American Psychological Association (APA) defines perception as: "the process or result of becoming AWARE of objects, relationships, and events by means of the senses, which includes such activities as recognizing, observing, and discriminating." In the two boxes on the next page, you find the difference between objective reality and reality lived using the most common definitions for Perception, as found in different dictionaries. As you can see, the two correspond nicely with the beginning and the end of the perception process. What happens in between is the result of our mental filters or cognitive distortions.  Objective Reality Reality Lived the ability to see, hear, or become aware of the way in which something is regarded, something through the senses. understood or interpreted. the quality of being aware of things through the a result of perceiving: observation; a mental image physical senses the recognition of things using your senses, the way that you think about it or the impression especially the sense of sight. you have of it. the process by which an organism detects and the immediate or intuitive recognition or interprets information from the external world by appreciation, as of moral, psychological, or means of the sensory receptors aesthetic qualities; insight; intuition; discernment Although we do need to express our emotions to maintain inner peace, there are some reflective questions we can ask ourselves, because it is so obvious that our perception plays a huge role in why certain emotions are triggered within us. Reflective Questions Are your emotions appropriate : For the Situation? In that specific Moment? In Intensity? In Duration? To help us understand how emotions function properly and how to express them appropriately, we can follow the circuit of positive emotions (when emotions are useful and help manage a situation), by using these reflective questions: 1. Is this emotion helpful in resolving the situation? 2. Does it act as a good radar to understand the situation and as a good driver to trigger the right kind and amount of useful energy? 3. Does it help me become aware of a need and develop the energy to fulfill it? 4. Is it proportionate, adequate, and appropriate to the situation? 5. Is it experienced at the moment of the event that caused it? 6. Is the time spent experiencing the emotion appropriate? Conclusion To become emotionally aware we must listen to all emotions, both pleasant and painful, we must feel them, observe them, with an open and curious mind, and pay attention to their wisdom. However, we may be afraid of not coming out of them anymore, fear drowning in them without having a small inner bubble through which we can breathe. It is then that we ask ourselves the following question: is there an ability to pay attention to them and listen to them without them taking over our being and all our inner space? We will discuss emotional regulation and emotion-response options in sessions 2.4 and 2.5. a w a y Key Take Accept emotions as they are a source of vitality. Take responsibility for them and understand they are not caused by others. De-dramatize emotions and recognize that emotions can be intense and explosive only when there are obstacles to their expression.